The ‘One Nation One Subscription’ (ONOS) scheme is an innovative programme undertaken by the Indian government to make free journals available to students, teachers and researchers across the nation. This effort is intended to offer a package subscription service that will replace dozens of direct subscriptions that each institutional library currently pays for to allow users full and instant access to thousands of high-quality academic journals.
Background and Objectives
The ONOS initiative will be funded with about ₹ 6,000 crores over the financial years 2025, 2026 and 2027 as approved by the Union Cabinet on 25th November, 2024. The main aim of the scheme is to boost the research activity of the country’s institutions and establish them in the leading Universities ranking list by offering them access to the most significant number of the best rated scholarly publications available. In this way, it is planned to promote interdisciplinary research and bridge the country / city gap in terms of opportunities for higher education.
Key Features
- This programme will give ONOS access to more than 12,999 high-impact e-journals from 30 leading international publishers by linking to a centralized digital platform to be run by INFLIBNET, which is an autonomous inter-university center of the UGC. This will ensure that student and researchers in government higher education institutions and Research and development (R&D) laboratories will be able to comfortably access these resources.
- Its aim is expansion of opportunities for 6300 institutions – government universities, colleges, research institutions, and R&D laboratories. This initiative is to enable more than 18 million students, faculty, and researchers in India, especially in tier 2 and tier 3 cities. They shall contribute to the promotion of central and interdisciplinary research in many disciplines.
- Through mass subscriptions to seek academic journals, ONOS will drastically cut down the costs which hitherto had been incurred by various institutions. Journal cost expenditure research conducted by National Institute of Plant Genome Research India revealed that India was paying about 1500 crores for journal subscription in 2018. The new scheme should be able to reduce these costs when making different forms of resources more easily available.
- The initiative also comprises of waivers on the charges that authors are required to pay so as to have their works in open access journals. This will motivate more people who are carrying out research to come up with their conclusions and make their work public.
Impact of ‘One Nation One Subscription’ initiative
The announced governmental scheme of ‘One Nation One Subscription’ (ONOS) is developing strategies to change the access to scholarly publications across India. ONOS aims at making knowledge easily accessible and improving research potential of institutions across the country by offering direct link to a database of academic journals and publications. This strategy is more important for a country which is as vast and heterogeneous as India where there have been documented concerns about the availability of quality academic related materials.
Impact of ONOS
- Enhanced Research Output: Through its equitable access to the best of scholarly articles and publications, ONOS is expected to fuel up the Indian institutions’ research portfolio. Data is communicated on the progress made in fields of study, thereby improving on their ideas and increasing chances of cross disciplinary research.
- Improvement in Global Rankings: The availability of very high quality research material is also likely to help raise the profile of education providers in India on an international level. ONOS makes certain that the faculty and researchers of the Universities / Research Institutes enhance their productivity in creating high impact researches which will, in the long run, transform the status of Indian Universities / Research Institutes in the International arena.
- Addressing the Digital Divide: The initiative is also very important in ensuring that there is bridge between urban and rural in as much as the digital compliance is concerned. By delivering scholarly resources to institutions in tier-2 and tier-3 cities, ONOS provides equal settings for students and researchers all over India.
- Boost to Academic Collaboration: By the very nature of creating a common ground for accessing and sharing of knowledge by researchers, ONOS enhance more academic collaboration as compared to the internet. Such a climate promotes interaction and cooperation and the possibility of developing joint research initiatives and cooperation both nationally and globally.
- Economic and Social Benefits: While integration of the resources results in more tangible benefits than cost savings on journal subscriptions alone. In a more general sense, the nurturing of a research culture enhances the production of a competent workforce that is familiar with the organisation’s framework, such as that which ONOS achieves. This in turn creates innovation, advance in the economy and overall improvement in the social sectors.
- Empowerment of Marginalized Communities: The initiative affirms the method of providing equally focused academic materials to the students in such regions as in other areas with privileged students. Such enlightened role empowers the individuals and or groups in the society by affording them education empowering them to change their status in the society hence bring out social justice in the society.
Challenges & Future Prospects
Currently, India has embraced the government-driven One Nation One Subscription (ONOS) project, which planned to provide broader access to superior scholarly publications across the country. In its role of offering users a single point of access to academic journals and publications, ONOS aims at improving the research calibre between the urban and rural learning institutions. However, the envisaged initiative has its strengths that may support it but it also has a number of challenges, which are discussed below in details to ensure that they are tackled to ensure that the program has the support it needs to be successful and sustainable.
Challenges
Coordination Among Stakeholders: It is therefore understood that for ONOS to be implemented and completed to optimum, there will be a need to have a delicate coordination with the central and state governments, as well as institutions of education, the publishing and regulatory institutions. Although these entities have to work collectively, it often proves quite difficult for one reason – because the resources as well as the motivation levels may vary across different institutions.
- Infrastructure and Digital Divide: Some of the major issues are that the tech-skill and the digital environment of the developed and the developing countries are poles apart and there is a huge gap between urban and rural settings in even the most developed countries. Although the formulation of the plan was intended to enable all learners have equal access to scholarly materials, there are various schooling facilities especially in rather developed regional education regions may not be in a position to implement the scheme to the optimum expected standard because of lack of constant internet connection and enough digital equipment. It is thus important that the ONOS address this digital divide in order to work successfully for all actors.
- Financial Sustainability: Several sources of funding are incorporated in the ONOS initiative, with the government contributing a huge roll of ₹6,000 crore for the first 3 operational years of 2025-27. To make sure that the financial sustenance of the project will be possible after this period of time, efficient planning of the supply is needed. Sustaining is pertinent in order to retain the subscription services and ensure that the workshop and the digital portal are equipped with new releases academic material.
- Public Awareness and Adoption: To this end, a heightened awareness about the ONOS initiative, in terms of how students, faculty and researchers can take advantage of the centralized subscription model must be created. Dissemination and use of the digital portal will therefore need promotion activities, training, promotional tools and convenient interfaces.
- Monitoring and Evaluation: Annual auditing of the impact of the initiative will be important in assessing the likelihood of success based on the research productivity and academic performance. Building capacity to collect, analyze, and report data on the effectiveness of the initiative will be critical in policy making.
Possible Solutions
- Enhanced Research Collaboration: Through making accessible thousands of journals and publications, ONOS will help scholars from different institutions and disciplines cope with their research tasks more effectively. Such collaborations will ensure that it becomes easier to have interdisciplinary studies championed by various academic fields and this will ensure that the common multifaceted problems facing the society are solved in the right way.
- Improvement in Global Academic Rankings: The availability of better quality scholastic material shall help researchers in India carry out more relevant studies and enhance the shelf image of Indian Universities globally. Higher research output and visibility will draw international partners and funding schemes to boost the university’s achievement.
- Empowerment of Marginalized Communities: Maintaining its thrust of inclusive access, this initiative shall mobilise power back to students and researchers of the disenfranchised communities in the same manner that their city counterparts access academic resources. This will help in the social emancipation through education to enable the country gain social reforms believably thus enhance its development.
- Integration of Advanced Technologies: The incorporation of the newest technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning could help improve the framework of the ONOS initiative. The collected dataset can also be used in real time monitoring, and predictive analysis to enhance on the users overall experience in the initiative, and consequently, amplifies its rationale.
- Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs): The ONOS initiative focuses on improving the implementation of the United Nation Sustainable Development Goals mainly, the 4th SDG, Quality Education, and the 9th SDG, Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure. ONOS is a key step to contribute to the achievement of these worldwide goals, through improved access to knowledge and furthered innovation.
- Public-Private Partnerships: The use of public private partnership can boost availability of resources and facilities needed for successful implementation of the initiative. Related non-profit organisations, companies from the information technology and publishing industry can bring more funds, knowledge and technological tools to the ONOS project.
By granting researchers equitable access to research resources, the planned "One Nation One Subscription" is anticipated to completely transform research access in India. It is important to aim at solving several challenges related to stakeholders’ cooperation, the establishment of digital infrastructure, and the financial sustainability of the project, but the further development of the initiative has some future outlook. Through encouraging research collaboration, increasing India’s university rankings internationally, supporting minority communities toward majority status, and by adopting new technologies and engaging multinationals, ONOS will help to significantly increase the research capacity of the country.